“Published by Authority and Represented with License: The
Figures and Narratives that Linked Ireland’s Print Media, Church, and Theatre,
1690-93”

A copy of the
paper that Prof. Tuite gave has been deposited with University Seminars.The following is a synopsis.

Following the conquest of Dublin in 1690 by Williamite forces, a small
group of pro-Williamite Protestant leaders mobilised its followers using a
combination of developing technologies and institutions, the most important of
which were the printing press, the pulpits of the conforming Church and the
Theatre Royal at Smock Alley.Prof. Tuite’s paper traces three key figures in each of these
institutions in order to better understand the links between the
institutions—Andrew Crook, a printer; William King, Dean of Derry and later
Archbishop of Dublin; and John Ashbury, manager and partial patent holder at the
Theatre Royal.

Andrew
Crook, in partnership with Samuel Helsham and Benjamin Tooke, was the king’s
printer in Ireland, having wrested the business away from his mother.Crook and Helsham printed documents for
Dublin Corporation (despite not having the patent), government proclamations
for Parliament, papers for the Royal Dublin Society, and sermons and other
ecclesiastical materials for the Church of Ireland.William King was an influential pamphleteer and sermon-writer
in Britain and Ireland.The son of
a Scots Presbyterian, he was an unlikely candidate for the Archbishopric of
Dublin—he rose primarily as a result of his prominence as a writer.King used the Crook-Helsham-Tooke team
to print his sermons and pamphlets in London and Dublin after the Williamite
Wars.

The
Smock Alley Theatre Royal, where John Ashbury was manager, was the second
theatre in Dublin.The first, John
Ogilby’s Werburgh Street theatre, was opened in 1637 and closed after the 1641
rising.After the Restoration John
Ogilby opened a new theatre with a royal charter in Smock Alley.Ashbury took over the management of the
theatre in 1668.In 1684 Ashbury
and Crook each gained a monopoly over one of Dublin’s growing media.There were significant links between
Ashbury and the Church and the Administration in Dublin.

None
of these links suggests that the clergy, printers and theatre practitioners
presented a unified whole that supplied homogeneous cultural production.However, those responsible for the
development of Ireland’s communication technologies at the time shared certain
beliefs, and, in publications, sermons and plays, welcomed the taking of Dublin
by Williamite forces.King’s
sermon of thanksgiving for the deliverance of Dublin celebrates safety from
“France and Slavery”, and associates duplicitous Catholics with Turks and
Tartars.In Crook and Robert
Thornton’s paper, the Dublin Intelligencer, rapparees, Tories and Turks harass the heroes of
Protestant Europe from Wicklow to Belgrade.That Ashbury chose to stage Shakespeare’s Othello in this climate is significant.Given the composition of the
cast—mostly officers of the King’s Guard from Dublin Castle—it is not
unreasonable to suggest that this 1691 Othello used metaphor and analogy to reenact the violence
Dublin’s Protestant population witnessed during the Williamite Wars.The analogies between Cyprus—a colony
of Venice—and Ireland allow for a rich interpretation of the links between
political figures in Ireland and characters in the play.

King’s
sermon and histories, Ashbury’s production, and the penal codes that Andrew
Crook printed after the wars disciplined Ireland’s administrators and soldiers
and warned Dublin’s Protestant population of the dangers of degeneracy.Ireland’s media attempted to
consolidate the power of the Kingdom’s Protestant population.

Q. You obviously did a lot of research for
this paper.Where did you find all
the sources?

A. I wanted to find out about real relations
between the people I have described.Mary Pollard and Robert Munter have done excellent work on Irish print
history, and Dix, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century had
excellent records.Many theatre
documents, including patents and records of theatre buildings and performances,
are reprinted in The Early Irish Stage.The
actors were not regulated, so they are not in these records.

Q. Of the three kingdoms, Ireland was the only
one with a Catholic majority.For
a few years in London there was a thriving print culture among Catholics—were
Catholics intervening in Dublin’s print culture too?

A. Some of the quarter brothers of the
Stationers’ Guild were Catholic.James Malone, who receives a patent from Tyrconnell is a
quarter-brother.Helsham and
Crook, both Protestant, were producing documents without patent, and Malone was
not.

Q. The simple narrative of the penal laws
seems to fall apart when it comes to print culture.

A. Yes.There were many Catholic printers in Kilkenny, among them one called
Burke—there were Old English producing material in Kilkenny and Dublin.After the 1690s the Dublin guild tried
to clamp down on it.

Q. When was the efflorescence of printing
under James II?

A. It happened right from the beginning of
James’ reign, and was primarily in religious printing.

Q. Were the divisions that existed in London
not found in Dublin?

A. In Dublin the divisions are not
confessional, but commercial.James Crook, for example, is divided for commercial reasons against his
own mother.There were indeed divisions.In 1689 there was a private reading of
Dryden, to try out his Tory material—it seems not to have met with any success.

Q. By Tory do you mean Church of Ireland?

A. Yes—Church of Ireland, high church, and in
favour of the king.But
affiliations are much more complex than confessional,Toryism at this time was simply a question of “who is the
monarch?”It was later made out by
Whigs to be Jacobitism.

Q. You craft a convincing argument about the
close-knit nature of the publishing and entertaining industry in Dublin, but I
wonder whether the story becomes less coherent if you look at who is buying
what, and whether there are differences across genres.

A. We have some records that help us
understand what was being published.One of these is Helsham’s daybook, a ledger from his office, which is
analysed by Mary Pollard.Some
things we do know are that there were more pamphlets than books published;
there was a used-book trade; there were more transactions between Dublin and
London than between Dublin and the rest of the country.Many of the writers were preaching to
the choir—there were more pro-Whig tracts post-war than anything else.Much of the reading was done in inns,
alehouses and coffee-shops.As for
print runs, Helsham printed 250 of one pamphlet.Some were reprinted—one pamphlet by King was reprinted four
times before 1700.When Dodwell
wished to publish in Dublin he was told that he would do better to publish
first in London, where he would get more vent, and then in Dublin.

Q. Could you talk a little bit more about how
you see the allegory in Othello?

A. I think you could read Venice as England
and Cyprus as Ireland, with the Moor being either James or Tyrconnell.I think Iago is more likely to be
Tyrconnell.The Turks could stand
for the Turks or the French, as King’s speech suggests.

Q. You started this paper by saying that you
were responding to a conference on the enlightenment.How is the paper a response, and to what?

A. It was a conference on the Enlightenment,
and I was disappointed by how the history of ideas was divorced from empirical
research.I was hoping that we
would talk about a network of political exchange.

Q. Were there significant differences among
the audience of Crook, King and Ashbury?

A. Dublin at the time is a diverse and
complicated city.Crook and
Thornton’s paper reported on the celebrations after the arrival of William of
Orange in Dublin.Only a small
group would have attended, but thanks to the newspaper, the even would have
trickled down to a much larger audience—it is a case of representing the re-enactment
of power.Theatre was
interesting.For the first time in
the 1690s the theatre as we know is, with the proscenium arch, emerged.There was room for about 650-750
seated.In the uppermost balcony
there were footmen and servants, while the stalls and boxes were for the
gentry.It was probably a diverse
audience, but we don’t know.

Q. There were many displays of power for which
the audience was the administration and the gentry themselves.Was there nervousness of apostasy?

A. Yes.I think this goes back to the fears that Spenser and Temple
express.Peter Manby, the dean of
Derry, converted to Catholicism during the war.These displays of power were ways to keep the English clean,
untainted and English.